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The Great Escape, the classic 1963 John Sturges World War II (WWII) military prison escape crime adventure thriller ("The great adventure! The great entertainment!"; "1:06 AM What went into these few secon1963 ds... 1:07 AM The hell... the heroism... the high adventure... 1:08 AM Make for the screen's great entertainment!"; with a superb "Screenplay by James Clavell & W.R. Burnett", "Based upon the book by Paul Brickhill"; note that this was largely a true story, but it was of course "enlarged" to make it even more dramatic, and some American prisoners, who were not at the actual prison camp, were added, so that the movie could include American actors James Garner and Steve McQueen) starring Steve McQueen (as Hilts "The Cooler King"), James Garner (as Hendley "The Scrounger"), Richard Attenborough (as Roger Bartlett, "Big X"), James Donald (as Group Capt. Ramsey "The SBO"), Charles Bronson (as Danny Velinski "Tunnel King"), Donald Pleasence (as Colin Blythe "The Forger"), James Coburn (as Sedgwick "Manufacturer"), Hannes Messemer (as Col. Von Luger "The Kommandant"), David McCallum (as Eric Ashley-Pitt "Dispersal"), Gordon Jackson (as Sandy "Mac" MacDonald "Intelligence"), John Leyton (as Willie Dickes "The Tunneler"), Angus Lennie (as Archibald "Archie" Ives "The Mole"), Nigel Stock (as Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor"), Robert Graf (as Werner "The Ferret"), William Russell (as Sorren), Lawrence Montaigne (as Haynes "Diversions"), Robert Desmond (as "Griff" Griffith "Tailor"), and Bud Ekins (Steve McQueen's friend, who performed the motorcycle jump at the film's climax, but he was uncredited, and almost everyone thought McQueen had done the jump himself!)
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Frank McCarthy

Important Added Info: Note that this is a VERY unusual poster, which we only auctioned three times before, and which does not measure the standard one-sheet size of 27" x 41", but which measures 27" x 39 1/4". None of the original release posters for this movie show the classic scene of Steve McQueen jumping a fence on his motorcycle, but this one-sheet does! There is a 1970 international re-release that does have that classic image of McQueen, and the lobby cards for that re-release have it in the border, but the one-sheet for that re-release does not. All of those 1970 re-release items have "Re-released thru United Artists" printed on them. So this poster can't be from that release. There is a 1980 and 1981 Australian re-release that also uses the motorcycle image, but those are different from this poster, and those also say United Artists. THIS poster does not have United Artists printed on it. So when is it from? Another auction house auctioned a linenbacked example of this poster, and they identified it as "R70s international". It seems quite possible to us that this is correct, and that this poster is from an undated international release that took place between the 1970 re-release and the 1980 Australian re-release (and there are some partially reproduced extra foldlines in this poster, which makes it likely that the art was reproduced from another poster). There is something more to the mystery about this poster. One of the ones we previously auctioned was not backed, and it was stamped on the back "THE GREAT ESCAPE FOREIGN 63/184"! We can only imagine that this is a mistake, and that they used the original year of release even though this is from the 1970s. Of course, it COULD possibly be from 1963, which would make the stamp correct, but it is printed on a glossy paper that was not used for U.S. one-sheets at this time (and also, studio release one-sheets were always 27" x 41" at this time), so that seems very unlikely. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

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